By Julie M. Baker, Marple Safety Coalition

There had been a service station with gas pumps there for as long as I can remember, right on the corner just past the modest little strip mall and fast food joint. As the only gas on the west side of State Route  320 for many miles, that part of the business did well, as did the service garage which was run by knowledgeable, helpful and friendly staff, and frequented by local residents and businesses alike.  When the mechanic relocated to larger digs six years ago, the garage, pumps and tanks were removed, and the property owner leased this 0.6 acre lot seasonally for Christmas tree sales.

Little did we know that PECO had designs on this site when they were planning a multi-year natural gas infrastructure expansion project to increase the use of fracked gas from Western Pennsylvaniain Montgomery and Delaware Counties. And how could we? They kept it under wraps as long as they could. In the late spring of 2020 about 80 local addresses received a brief letter touting a “Reliability Project” to include an additional supply line, and a station to be built at Sproul and Cedar Grove Roads. Residents were invited to a Zoom meeting, which less than twenty of us attended.  I listened to a brief presentation devoid of any substantive information and sensed my innate skepticism morph into alarm as several neighbors posed reasonable general questions, which the PECO representatives returned as blithely and innocuously as badminton shuttlecocks.

Preliminary Internet research on “reliability stations” yielded no hits that summer; it took months for the Company to insert that terminology into their rhetoric, along with a slapdash stab at a gas sustainability policy to accompany one recently composed for electricity. Upon learning the issue was on the October agenda to the Marple Township Zoning Hearing Board, I pulled up the code and read that for this commercial zone, which is a neighborhood center district, a special exception is required for a public utility facility. PECO was also applying for a variance in order to exceed the maximum 6 foot fence height with an 8-foot wall, and they tried to mislead people into thinking that this was the primary matter. I noted the intent and character of the District, with its stipulation for low-intensity, pedestrian-friendly retail and service establishments with no adverse effects to the community. his looked for all the world to be a textbook example for the worst type of site proposal possible: an industrial depressurization plant with a 500+ psi incoming main, six 4.6 MMBTU line heaters having 18-foot emission stacks, and a backup generator - with houses on three sides, an elementary school 150 yards away, four houses of worship within one-quarter mile, and no assurance that nearby residents would even benefit from timely, economical hookups.

After several telephone conversations with PECO staff (who always double-teamed) intent on reassuring and assuaging while withholding crucial data about other locations considered and similar installations in their service area, I drafted a letter alerting the neighborhood and delivered it on foot to several hundred homes in the surrounding subdivisions with the help of concerned neighbor Bob D’Orazio. Our ward commissioner would not return his calls. On the advice of former Southeastern Pennsylvania Group executive committee member, John Butler, I reviewed and photographed the essential documents in the township’s folder, visited one marginally-analogous facility, and prepared an organized, comprehensive statement for the public input part of the meeting. After PECO strutted through their PowerPoint, brimming with overconfidence, our Zoning Hearing Board raised many important issues regarding safety, health, and increased traffic hazards at an already dangerous intersection, and ten other appalled and enraged citizens also voiced their concerns. PECO’s land-use attorney actually asked for a decision on the spot, seeming to believe that their slick presentation and long-accustomed surety entitled them to an immediate approval, but the Board demurred, and within the month both they and the Township Board of Commissioners voted against the appeal for zoning relief.

Around this time Facebook and Next Door discussions popped up like mushrooms on sterilized compost, and with some extremely skillful computer work by Holly Cross, much-appreciated consultation with Eric Friedman of the Middletown Coalition for Community Safety, along with guidance from Eve Miari, Logan Welde and Russell Zerbo of the Clean Air Council, the Marple Safety Coalition (MSC) was born. Meanwhile, PECO‘s External Affairs employees continued to “engage” the public by talking down to individuals with disingenuous empathy and holding Zoom meetings in which they divided the participants into smaller groups and attempted to persuade them to turn their backs, as if only a few residents would be affected. All the while they continued to lay pipe in the direction of the site for which they still lacked approval, promised and then refused to consider more appropriate locations scouted and presented by Coalition leaders, and filed an appeal against the Zoning Hearing Board with the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas (Docket # CV-2020-008477).  This case was recently assigned to a Judge and a prehearing conference was held on June 2nd.

In their primary responses PECO backpedaled furiously to focus on how much the added infrastructure was going to be needed over the next ten years, how truly experienced they are with the technology of what they had initially termed “the first animal we have created,” how they had searched high and low and ruled out so many other sites, as well as how widely they had informed the community. The Coalition expanded its outreach efforts by distributing flyers, establishing a social media presence (www.MarpleSafe.com), organizing a ‘letter writing campaign’, networking with allied groups, holding interviews for the press, holding demonstrations, and even sending a mailer to our entire zip code. PECO began to send monthly color brochures in the mail to a broader address list, continued to stonewall us on specific questions, and in late Winter of 2021, filed with the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC)  not merely for the customary Certificate of Convenience, but for a Finding of Necessity (Docket # P-2021-3024328), citing a statute which could provide them with an ‘end around’ to override the municipal zoning code altogether.

Fortunately Marple Township is joined by Delaware County in their defense against these actions, and we have the support of our PA legislators Senator Tim Kearney and Representative Jennifer O’Mara.  In fact, the 500 yard signs peppering our landscape were her idea.  The PUC case is well underway, and our grassroots campaign is making a difference: not only did approximately 100 stalwart souls testify during two days of public input hearings shortly before Memorial Day, but our local polling place had an inordinately large turnout for the May 18th primary, on an off year nonetheless, and the word on the street is that people thought there would be something about the PECO issue on the ballot!  The PUC evidentiary hearings are now set for July 15th and 16th.  My next door neighbor Ted Uhlman and I are active parties in the proceedings and are working to assist the attorneys to the best of our abilities.

Marple Township is pretty much smack dab  in the middle of the county, and PECO claims they need the station here because it is the area of lowest pressure. They are bringing in an 11-mile line from the north at fairly high pressure (‘line-packing’), but they are also converting a line across the southern part of the county from oil to natural gas, so it is possible they could connect from there as well. Moreover, our township has a designated industrial park about a mile distant. Even though it seems that PECO, their employees, and their contractors have been purposefully spreading the word that “It’s a done deal,” just about every newly-informed person instantly asks, “Why don’t they build it in the industrial park?”

In the year that I have been subscribing to the Pipeline Safety Google Group, the Energy Information Agency, the Sane Energy Project, and a host of otherE-lists, I have become opposed to fossil fuel proliferation, and have learned that expanding infrastructure just feeds the flames for renewed extraction projects. Here in Marple, we would love to join Berkeley, CA (and now Lower Merion Township, PA!) in working towards precluding gas connections for new construction; we only just appointed an active Environmental Action Committee member (MSC’s own Greg Fat) who introduced the matter at his first Board of Commissioners Meeting. Let’s join together to rally against PA SB 275, which would prohibit municipalities from such progress. At this time our only hope is to successfully refute PECO‘s claims of necessity for this particular site, and convince the courts to rule for us and compel them to find another. We don’t want it to impose on anyone else’s community, but please consider the $80 million dedicated to this overall project in the rate hike request, which is regardless of how many new customers sign on, and how much PECO is already spending in litigation when they can do the right thing…

Perhaps now you can begin to understand how it feels to walk down Mary Lane, one block away, seeing little kids riding mini bikes and trikes (just like we did in the early 1960s), praying that we will never need an emergency evacuation, planning to barricade my property behind a massive sound barrier of trees and shrubs, or to wonder whether my garden will still support the host of songbirds, praying mantises, swallowtails, and toads who flourish here.